So, tomorrow we'll finally see "The Why of Fry", (*) but TVGuide lists a King of the Hill repeat for next week and an X-Men 2 preview for the week after. In other words: If the KotH repeat holds true, tomorrow could be the season's finale due to FOX supposedly not airing Futurama during May sweeps. This would mean that Season 5 consisted out of 8 episodes aired over a 5 months time span unless possible summer runs of the remaining 8 episodes would be counted towards this season.

The region 2 (Europe) Futurama Season 3 DVD set is now up for preordering at amazon.co.uk for £35.19 (12% off). Orders placed over this link help us pay our server bills.The release is scheduled for June, 2nd and the 4 disc set will feature 22 episodes. More details on our Futurama DVD Season 3 preview page.A pre-order for the German discs should be available soon (currently only lists an import).

FrysGIRL submitted 1 picture, yes you read it correctly. By this I have set the record for World's Smallest Update. This update is also dedicated to a) #futuramachat b) The Fanart Zone c) my mom. This is TGIF signing off for today

GC Europe has an official trailer for the Futurama Game up and game.uk has a longer preview.Expect the release date for Game Cube, Playstation 2 and XBox to be around start of June 2003 if everything goes well. Preorders in the UK are available at amazon.co.uk for £34.99 (PS2/XBOX) and £24.99 (Game Cube). No signs of US preorders yet. The US publisher FOXi was recently sold to Vivendi Universal.

As The Why of Fry is likely to trigger a bit of response, both the episode reviews and the episode capsule are already up, now that it aired on the East Coast. If you haven't seen it yet, beware that these include heavy SPOILERS. Be strong and wait the few hours.Quotes, sounds, framegrabs and - Andie willing - trivia will be there by tomorrow morning.

"At this point, it's like a little reunion. [...] We do them in real time, with surprisingly little preparation.

and Futurama promotion by Cartoon Network:

They've [Cartoon Network] doubled and tripled the ratings in their demographic. [...]I saw an ad on CNN during Moneyline. That told me they must be doing a lot of ads, if they're covering Moneyline.... This, after going literally three years without any promotion on Fox"

You can read the whole article by Tim Clodfelter at journalnow.Indeed, the Futurama ratings on Cartoon Network seem to be going up. While the best scoring Futurama episode in January landed on #64 (out of all things shown on Cartoon Network that month), February ratings sees Futurama as high as #9, which is really good for an 11PM show.

Issue 12 of the Futurama comics has been shipped to your favourite comic book guy a week ago. Time to give it a review (or finally buy it if you didn't yet).

No. 13 will have the following plot:

Things go to hell in a handbasket when Bender loses his job after accidentally poisoning the Planet Express crew. But there are slim pickings on the unemployment line for a former bending unit turned toxic chef. That is until he gets an offer he can't refuse from the robot devil.

Today is your last chance to take part in our region 1 Futurama Season 1 DVD contest. To stand a chance, you'll definitely have to have all five trivia questions right. The five winners will be picked at midnight (PDT) and have 72 hours to respond to the notification email. Good luck.

Midnight passed and my edelfied random number generator picked 5 lucky people among the 98 correct entries (692 total). Without further ado:

David Ho.

Tom Gr.

Eric Gar.

Abby P.

Justin B.

All five of them have been notified by email and have until Saturday ends to claim their free Futurama Season 1 DVD set. To the rest of you: Tough luck, suckers. Just go and buy it (plus preorder Season 2) Thanks goes to FOX HE for enabling us to give out these goodies.

Farnsworth: "We, by which I mean you, will have to rush him to his ancient homeworld, which will shortly erupt in an orgy of invertebrate sex."Fry: "Oh, baby. I'm there!"Leela: "Fry, do you even understand the word invertebrate?"Fry: "Nope, but that's not the word I'm interested in. No need to pack pants, people. Let's roll!"(listen to it)

Going from there, we can expect "No Futurama", "No Futurama", "No Futurama" and "No Futurama", due to May Sweeps during which FOX will try to get high ratings Futurama can't produce in its "never on, never promoted" state. Unaired episodes are expected to be shown starting June.We'll still have a weekly outlook for FOX - just in case.

Metered market Nielsen ratings for Sunday are in and I thought I'd just let you know even though no Futurama was on.The 7-7:30PM slot was dominated by a 11.0/19 PGA Masters overrun on CBS, followed by a 5.8/10 Dateline half-hour on NBC. ABC's Dr. Dolittle repeat finished with 4.5/7 average between 7 and 9PM. FOX's Futurama replacement "King of the Hill" episode (repeat) came in fourth with a low 3.4/6 rating.

This compares to:

Futurama - The Why of Fry 3.8/6

Futurama - Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles 4.3/7

Reading ratings: Generally higher = better. First number indicates how many people watched, second tells what percentage of the watching people that is. Advertisers like the first number better, but these highly depend on the time slot as less people watch TV during the nights/dinner time etc.

From May 25th onwards, Futurama will be removed from the Sunday 11PM time slot in Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block when Home Movies takes its spot. However, Futurama will continue to air Mondays through Thursdays at 11PM. Starting this Sunday, Family Guy will follow up Futurama at 11:30PM but Cartoon Network won't be showing the first season (1ACX) for the time being. Luckily, the Family Guy Season 1 & 2 DVD combi set just came out today in the USA.

I got a first picture of the Futurama 2004 Calendar cover for you. The list price is $12.99 and release date should be August 2003. Preorders are available at $10.39. The picture looks like a reference to M.C. Escher's "Hand with Reflecting Sphere". This might hint at an art theme. I'll try to find out.

Thanks to FrysGIRL, we now have word in from Futurama executive producer David X. Cohen that the Futurama staff will most likely be attending this year's San Diego Comic-Con in California. For the past few years, David and the Futurama staffers have attended the event and always brought a fresh unaired episode for the Comic-Con-ers to view.

DavidX: We ARE currently planning to do a panel at Comicon, probably on Saturday. It's not 100% definite yet, but maybe about 90%.

Saturday's Comic-Con is on July 19th, and admission is between $10 and $20 for a one day pass. I'm definitely planning to go to this event, and will make a CGEF report once I get back. Also attending the con will be Bongo Comics with a booth on the main floor. There, Futurama and Simpsons comics artists sign autographs and sell comics and reprint books. Every once in a while, they also have contests and give out free buttons that feature Futurama and Simpsons characters. And on Sunday the 20th, Bongo will have a panel dicussion regarding their comics.

David A. Goodman - writer for the episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" - answered some questions pitched together by the people at the Futurama message board PEEL.

Q: Even though the Welshy jokes were hilarious, why didn't the episode feature James Doohan?

Goodman: We approached James Doohan's agent, who said the Doohan's response to being in the episode was "No way." We don't know why we got such a strong response, but we assumed he thought he'd be working with Shatner.

Even though the King of the Hill repeat last week fared worse than any Futurama episode in that time slot, FOX is seemingly going to air more KotH for most of May. The planned-for Simpsons repeats have been pushed back to 8:30PM as The Pitts vanish from Sundays. On the 25th of May, FOX is airing NASCAR. After that, we can hope for some Futurama.

Cartoon's "Adult Swim" animation block caught fire quickly after Turner Broadcasting (a division of AOL Time Warner, as is CNN.com) expanded it from two to five nights a week in January. Replacing kid-friendly fare with off-kilter cartoons ranging from original fare like "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" to acquisitions like "Futurama," "Swim" is draining pools of young viewers accustomed to broadcast fare from 11 p.m.-2 a.m.

From January 13-March 23, "Swim" outdelivered "Kimmel," "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," "Late Show With David Letterman," "The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn" and "Last Call With Carson Daly" in viewers 12-17, males 12-17 and males 12-24.

CNN decorated the broad article with a promo shot of Futurama's "Time Keeps on Slippin'" and subtitled it "'Futurama,' the Fox series now appearing on Cartoon Network, has been key to the latter's late-night success."

In other news: FOX's Futurama replacement "X-Men 2 Special" last Sunday stank in the ratings.

German Amazon now lists the set. However, the release date is said to be September 13th and the price €54,99. Compared to that, Amazon in the UKoffers the set for June 2nd and at £29.99 which translates to roughly €45/$45 after adding shipping to western Europe or the US.If the late date on the German amazon isn't wrong, it could be explained by the local station PRO7 never airing one of the included episodes. If you can live without having the (horrible) German sound, I'd recommend buying the sooner and cheaper British set.

SCI in the UK now officially lists July 4th as the release date for Europe (well, at least for the UK. Don't know if that's valid for other nations, too). By now amazon.co.uk mostly is in accordance with that, but for the X-Box one which they wrongly list as already released.

FOXi - the former Northern American publisher - never told much about the release, but now I got a press release by Vivendi Universal Games (who bought FOXi). They don't list the Game Cube (error? I'll investigate) and the release date is vague with "3rd Quarter".

"Futurama's sci-fi themes fit perfectly with sophisticated video game technology, helping you imagine what it would be like to be alive in the 31st Century. It involves blasting a lot of aliens." -- Matt Groening

Also, if you go to eMerchandise before Thursday and enter "MY_MOM" as a coupon at the bottom of the shopping basket page, every item (non-Futurama, too) not yet at 10% off will be set to that. I'd suggest having a look at the Futurama Series Coasters (see our review) as the popular Slurm Can is out of stock.

I just got confirmation by the public relations director of Vivendi Universal Games that there won't be a Game Cube version of the Futurama Video Game in Northern America. SCi (Europe) does not yet confirm a release date for that version either, after all. I've been told by people testing the game that there were only PS2 and X-Box versions around at that time (about three months ago). This could indicate some problems with the time line or with technical/quality issues. Seemingly, two of the game producers have abandoned ship (or got thrown overboard) at the development company, which doesn't really bode well in the final stages.

After showing "The Why of Fry" yesterday, Sky One is going to air reruns on Sundays for the time being as they caught up with FOX in the US. Supposedly, Sky is allowed to show episodes before they ran on FOX, but I very much doubt that will happen. Next Sunday will be "Luck of the Fryrish".

Back to where Futurama is treated nicely, Futurama was able to reach out to 859,000 adults between 18 and 34 on April 23th, making it the most-watched telecast in the target demo in Cartoon Network history. Ever. Together with the prior throne occupier - Family Guy - it "propelled the network's Adult Swim franchise to #1 in its time period on all cable during April with men 18-34 and men 18-24." (quote CN)Rising numbers don't seem to stop yet either. Just last week was Adult Swim's most watched period for most of its target demographics since the block started.

Amazon.co.uk put up a new box art picture for the upcoming region 2 Futurama Season 3 DVD set. It's in the spirit of the pictures we showed you before (in fact, it's the continuation of that picture). You can get a bigger version on their site by clicking the image there. Also, if you can play region 2 DVDs in PAL, preorder it for June 2nd 2003. Don't make me get the Pain Monster

Presenting that pink clad princess of the ring, that tin terror in a tutu, that gladiator with the golden curls - The Gender Bender! You can't resist this 8.5 inches tall charm! Usually ships next day from our affiliated store eMerchandise.

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